Most OpenWrt targets are devices with known and unchanging architectures. This allows OpenWrt to be compact; it contains only software that is required for the target's components to work.

Some targets, however, have open architectures. The most notable (but by no means the only) example of this i...

First and foremost, what even is a router-on-a-stick? A router-on-a-stick is a router with only one port. On network diagrams, it is shown with only one line pointing to it, so it looks like a food item served "on a stick":

But if we have fewer ports than a "normal" router, don't we have to c...

OpenWrt has been originally developed for resource-constrained platforms. Consequently, even on x86, it doesn't have a traditional installer. Rather than install software, you copy an image onto the boot drive. That image is fairly small (about 120 MB in recent versions), so out of the box, OpenWr...

pfSense includes a nifty add-on package called LCDproc. It is used to display system information on a tiny LCD screen that some rack-mountable devices have on the front panel.

LCDproc is not installed by default. Moreover, it doesn't work with every imaginable LCD display (there are quite a few...

WatchGuard Firebox M470 and related models (M370, M570, M670) have reached end of sale on July 1, 2023 and will remain in support with the manufacturer until July 1, 2028. However, the manufacturer encourages its customers to upgrade, so there are units available on the secondary market already, and...

This HOWTO is intended for the relatively new users who have some experience with general computing and system administration but are not (yet) comfortable with flashing firmware and need some friendly handholding to get through the process. Some potentially necessary general education will be provi...

Occasionally, you need a list of packages installed on OpenWrt. The standard opkg list-installed is great, except it lists package versions in addition to package names. So if you need to list names only, here's what you can do.

To show each name on a new line:

opkg list-installed | cut -f 1...

The OpenWrt community has complied a dataset of Wireguard performance tests run (under OpenWrt, of course) on different hardware. The dataset is available here:

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/a-wireguard-comparison-db/187586

We have downloaded this dataset on June 29, 2024 (it has probably been...

Situation: a Linksys WRT1900AC router is running DD-WRT v3.0-r57834 std (08/10/24). With stock settings, the AC (5 GHz) wireless connection delivers a throughput of approximately 120 Mbps (tested using iperf3). Here's how the throughput changed when we changed some of the settings (all settings m...

pfSense includes a nifty add-on package called LCDproc. It is used to display system information on a tiny LCD screen that some rack-mountable devices have on the front panel.

LCDproc is not installed by default. Moreover, it doesn't work with every imaginable LCD display (there are quite a few of...